Eastern Kentucky University’s new Science Building, now under construction, will be furnished with some new state-of-the-art science equipment, thanks to a $951,500 federal appropriation secured by Sixth District Congressman Ben Chandler.

Chandler made the announcement at a brief news conference prior to the University’s Scholars Assembly on Friday, April 17, in the Crabbe Library’s Grand Reading Room.

“I see regularly the statistics on how we’re doing as a nation in science,” Chandler said, “and we’ve got a lot of work to do. I think EKU is well on the road to moving us forward in the direction we want to go.

“I could not be more proud of what this institution, the administration, the faculty and particularly the students are accomplishing,” added Chandler, the only member of the Kentucky delegation on the Science and Technology Committee. “It’s easy to help people doing the job as well as you’re doing it.”

EKU President Doug Whitlock said the University’s new Science Building, the first phase of which is scheduled to open for the Fall 2011 semester at a cost of approximately $64 million, “guarantees the academic relevancy of Eastern Kentucky University” and that the $951,500 appropriation would “make a true difference” for EKU.

Kentucky and the nation “must educate more students in the sciences, and we’ve got to do a better job educating students in the sciences,” Whitlock said.

In thanking Chandler for his support of the University, Whitlock said, “We can’t do everything we do without help, and no experience has been more positive than the relationship EKU has been able to develop with Congressman Chandler.”

Faculty Regent Dr. Malcolm Frisbie, a biology professor who has shepherded the Science Building project through its planning and design phases, said the federal appropriation will be applied to a variety of “big-ticket” and “small-ticket” items, in some cases “adding capabilities that we have never had before.” Some of the equipment will be put into use before the move to the new building.

Every baccalaureate degree-seeking student at EKU takes at least two science courses during his or her time at the University.

“One of the great things this building is going to do for us is to allow us to make every EKU student’s experience in the sciences even more hands-on than we are able to do right now,” Frisbie continued. “To do more than we are currently doing, we need equipment … lots and lots of equipment. This appropriation will be an enormous help in getting our students to learn about the natural world by looking at it microscopically, by analyzing what makes it up, and by measuring different facets of it.”

Frisbie added the new equipment will “help make our classes more dynamic and make research projects more readily doable. It will be so much easier for faculty to work with students on research projects that I think we will see an even greater number of faculty-student research collaborations than we already produce.”

He also noted that future teachers will be able to study science in a “well-equipped, state-of-the-art facility. If we can turn the future teachers on to science – and we’ll have the elements to do that – think what the ripple effect will be. Teachers will head to their new jobs excited to engage their students in science activities. The payoff to eastern Kentucky down the road can be enormous.”